FLOSS
FLOSS is an acronym standing for Free, Libre, and Open Source Software -- a collection of terms encompassing various software movements and licensing styles that encourage the modification and redistribution of software source code. The terms Open Source software and Free software redirect to this page. Overview Women form a very small part of the FLOSS community. Estimates range from 1%-5% depending on the survey. Many people say they want to encourage more women in FLOSS, but don't know how to go about this. Issues Invisibility Women form a small proportion of the FLOSS community. However, people often speak or act as if they don't exist at all. Examples include: * Describing a dichotomy of "geeks" and "women" in such a way that the idea of "women geeks" is impossible, as in (insert link to Bruce Perens on LWN saying "women hate geeks") * Writing, speaking, or acting in such a way as to appeal to men (and presumably straight men at that). * Not noticing women's contributions to FLOSS (link to RMS not knowing that women had contributed to GCC) * Wildly underestimating the number of women in FLOSS (link to Bruce Perens on LWN) * Making statements about women as if there were none present, when a woman is right there. Condescension Sexualized environment * Sexist advertising * Sexism at Technical conferences, user group meetings, etc, including Sexualized presentations, Booth babes, and more Essentialism and Social expectations * Social expectations expecting women to do documentation, UI, etc. * Tokenism -- see also Unicorn Law How to encourage women in FLOSS Many people have written about how to get more women involved in FLOSS or support those who are involved. For example: * HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux * What works: getting more women involved in open source * To Sir With Love: how to get more women involved in open source (O'Reilly Network) ** Forum discussion of the above article (see comment thread) Many strategies have been suggested. Below are some of the common ones, broken down by category: Women-only or women-centric groups/events/etc Groups such as LinuxChix and events such as the LinuxChix miniconf support and encourage women in several ways: * Combatting Invisibility * Providing mutual support and an understanding environment to discuss issues User group meetings, conferences, etc The following steps can be taken to make user group meetings, conferences, and other real-life gatherings more welcoming: * Explicitly invite Women speakers * Discourage Sexualized presentations Mailing lists and other online forums * Don't allow Sexist humor, Online harrassment, or other behaviours that discourage women * Someone (need link!) suggested that web forums, with their better moderation tools, maybe friendlier for women. (Not sure I agree with this though -- Skud 00:56, 9 July 2009 (UTC)) Development tools and techniques * Providing hosted development environments, as Dreamwidth does, can help encourage women to participate * Wikis and other such resources can make the barriers to entry lower for new developers (including but not limited to women) Paid open source work * Want more women in open source? try paying them. Terri Oda suggests that seeding open source projects with paid developers who happen to be women would help show a commitment to diversity and encourage more women to join. Incidents The FLOSS field is rife with incidents of sexism, harrassment, and the like. Harrassment incidents Main article: Online harrassment * Debian and LinuxChix harrassment * Debian death threats Inappropriately sexual conference presentations Main article: Sexualized presentations * Debconf ftp-masters talk * Acme::Playmate talk * CouchDB talk * Hoss Gifford's talk at Flashbelt * EMACS Virgins Joke Sexist advertising See also: Sexist advertising, Booth babes * Linux Journal blowjob ad * BSD Daemon booth babes Other/uncategorized * Valerie Aurora (then contributing as "Val Henson") thought to be a man -- see this parody homepage * Ubuntu Code of Conduct incident * Open Source Boob Project * SLUG committee 2009 nomination dispute * Planet Fedora up-skirting photo * Perl is my bitch Resources Conference presentations/panels about women in FLOSS (Most recent first.) * Standing Out in the Crowd by Kirrily Robert at OSCON 2009 * Women in Open Source keynote by Angela Byron at Open Web Vancouver 2009 -- Video/slides here * Attracting Women to Open Source BoF at Linux Symposium in 2009. * The Blonde and the Scruffy Coder by Olivier Cleynen at CLT2009 * Heroes: Women in FOSS by Pia Waugh at OSCON 2008 * Form an Orderly Queue Ladies by Emma Jane Hogbin at OSCON 2008 * Why Women -- even non-programmers -- benefit from participating in Open Source projects at BlogHer '08 Groups for women in FLOSS * LinuxChix * DrupalChix * Debian Women * GnomeWomen * Ubuntu Women Conferences/events about women in FLOSS * LinuxChix miniconf (annually since ???) * SCALE WIOS sessions (annually since ???) * FSF mini-summit on Women in Free Software (2009) Finding women in FLOSS * List of women in FLOSS * List of women-dominated projects in FLOSS Category:Communities